


The H Block

by akire_yta



Series: prompt ficlets [494]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 21:57:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12285168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: preludeinz gave me a bunch of prompts starting with H, so here they all are.  Individual warnings in the notes of each chapter.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1 HURT (which is what I do to John *g*)

Everything hurt, but given the way his suit was failing, he’d soon not feel it. 

As far as bright sides went, he’d had better.

John’s ankle had twisted on impact, the escape pod hitting silvery dust with enough force that the faceplate of his helmet now had a hairline crack. Bright side, it had taken the blow as he’d bounced off the walls. The tiny spray of blood had crystalized around the crack, a ruby-shimmer that constantly caught his attention. John dragged himself down a crater and up the other side before he’d thought of a bright side of that.

Aesthetic was more Gordon’s thing than his, but it was the best he could do.

His ribs had gone from groaning to screaming, and the taste of tin was getting heavy on the back of his tongue. John’s balance was shot with the ankle barely taking weight, or even one sixth of it. He’d had to clutch his other wrist up close to his heart to stop it from throbbing, and a tentative squeeze of his glove had caused ripples that spoke of fluid pooling.

It wasn’t just the lack of atmosphere that was causing everything to fade into shades of deep black and brilliant white.

The death of his Thunderbird had hung a bright star in the sky, but now the vacuum had sucked out that first. Bright side, these stars were as familiar to him now as the one’s back in Kansas, and he was sure his heading was still true.

Shadow Alpha was long gone; but John had grown up on those stories, and he always had a good memory for small details. Like the story Uncle Lee had told him once when he was ten about how, whenever he lost a bet with dad during the long dull waits on Shadow Alpha, he had to go work on the bug-out base.

The emergency shelter was thick with dust, and it took all his strength to haul open the long-sealed hatch.

Bright side, in space, no-one could hear him scream.

The bug-out in his ten year old imagination had been bigger, cleaner, newer. To the Thunderbird, it seemed dated and decrepit. But the bright side was starting to shine, the emergency beacon a simple smash button on the console.

John curled up in the corner, conserving heat, conserving the last of his air, and just let himself hurt until rescue came.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2 Hide (Kayo/Virgil)

No-one went much past the rocky cliffs that overlooked the bay.  The wall of foliage appeared an impenetrable barrier, and everyone knew that it was just sharp rocks and sharper drops over that side of the bay.

Kayo knew better; there was a path, if you were careful and nimble and didn’t mind occasionally getting up in the trees.  She had sensors hidden all around the island, and even if she checked on them regularly, she wasn’t about to leave goat tracks in the greenery that would just give away their position.  She saw the leaves and plants like tactical markers, defensible positions, veils over secrets.

Virgil had an artists’ eye for detail and an engineers’ appreciation of a system, and enough respect for her to let her monitor her own machines.  He moved quietly for a big guy, confident as he found hand grip and foothold, swinging easily over the cassisia without disturbing so much as a flower.

Kayo had been waiting for him; everyone knew that Kayo liked to make her rounds alone.

Virgil had a backpack over one shoulder, a fistful of paintbrushes jammed into the side pocket for camouflage.  She turned with a smile, and silently led him across the untouched half of the island, trusting him to put his feet in her prints, to see the ways up and over without needing to be coached or coddled.

The far side of the island was sharp rocks and sharper drops.  But if you were careful and nimble, there was a way down to the tiny beach that marked a shallow cave that overlooked the open ocean.  The rocks on this side arched above the sand like a cathedral, and even if a stray made it this far across the island, you could hide Fab 1 on the sand and couldn’t see it from the edge of the tree line.  Even flying over it, you had to know what you were looking for to see into the sandy nook.

Regardless of those features, she still scouted the waterline and along the rockface as Virgil calmly shook out the rug.  But all those little marks she was looking for indicated that none had come here since their last visit.

Confident they were now alone, she dropped to her knees on the edge of the rug and accepted the plastic picnic flute full of sparkling champagne that Virgil held out for her.  She kept it aloft as Virgil raised his own glass, clinking it dully against hers.  “Happy anniversary, Tanusha.”

She smiled back.  “Happy anniversary, Virgil.”  She took a sip, then leaned forward to kiss the bubbles off his lips.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3\. Hire (Scott)

Most of the gaggle of her fellow models were giggling, getting into the champagne, taking selfies for their accounts.

Jetset life with Scott Tracy <3 XOXO

No doubt there was a hashtag already gaining traction. But the man himself was pacing along the long plate glass window, staring down at the tarmac.

It was easy enough for her to get two glasses, sashay over, flutter her eyelashes. “You okay, honey?”

“I hate flying rentals, you never know what cowboy’s been in them. I should at least do a walk around? Maybe a quick engine test…”

She frowned, then smoothed her expression - she earned millions only as long as her face was tanned and unlined. “Huh, honey?”

Scott shook his head, and with a flicker his million watt grin flashed back into light. “Oh, nothing. I just like flying my own jets. Maybe,” he added with a leer that was very nearly convincing. “Next time you and me can take a little jaunt in Tracy One?”

She knew what was expected of her, so she clinked her glass against his, let herself snuggle in against him, and pretended not to notice the worried glances he kept throwing at the hired jet being refueled on the tarmac below.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4\. Hint

“Give us a hint!”  Scott laughed at Gordon’s almost puppish eagerness as he cross-examined his brother.  If Gordon had a tail, it would be wagging.

To be fair, his ears were pricking too.

John had never so much as turned to watch a pretty girl walk by.  And now he had invited them out to  _meet someone special_.  Virgil was tied up with his thesis, and so a Gordon flushed with success and wearing maturity like an ill-fitting coat had been recruited to make up the foursome heading for dinner.

But John was playing his cards close to his chest. Since dropping his subtle bombshell, he’d wisely made himself scarce.

Scott wondered if he’d mentioned it to dad yet; probably not.

Scott knew his brother well enough to know that he and Virgil and now Gordon were test run before the main event.

John’s grown up in the UK, moving confidently in a sleekly modern three piece suit as he bounds up the stairs to the discreet little bistro he’d selected for this meeting.

“Your other guest has already arrived, sir,” the maître d’ murmured as the attendant took their coats.

They had the quietest table that only their kind of money could buy.  As they apprached, Scott got a flash of golden blonde hair.  The woman turned, rising in an elegant sweep of her pale pink skirt.  She was short, shorter even than Gordon, and she lifted on her tiptoe to meet John’s cheek with a fond kiss as he bent into her with an ease he showed with few others.  “There you are, I was afraid you’d found someone more interesting to spend the evening with.”

Scott isn’t the only one to notice that John’s got an easy hand resting at the nape of her neck as he turns to his brothers.  “Unfortunately not, so we’ll have to make do with these two.  Pen, these are my brother Gordon and Scott.  Guys, this is Penelope.”

Her grip was firm, her smile measured but warm.  “Charmed, I’m sure.  John,” she added with a flash of a much richer smile up at him as he helped her resume her seat.  “Has told me so much about you.”

Gordon was gape-mouthed, so Scott leaned in with his most charming smirk.  “Well, he’s told us nothing about you.”

The grin he got back had a knife edge.  “Has he now? We’ll have to see what we can do about that.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5\. Hero (smol!Jeff)

Jeff had ran and ridden his bike, careening through the dust and up to the house to raise the alarm.  Riding with his dad and some farm hands back to the scene of the crash, he kept his eyes open and his mouth shut, even as he tasted bile looking at the way bones were breaking skin, the spilled blood collecting the dry Kansas dust like flies onto molasses.

He climbed up in the bed of the truck and held the girl’s hand all the way into town.  She grimaced and squeezed weakly as they rode over the bumps and corrugations of the old worn out country lane.  He squeezed back and willed his dad to drive faster.

Only once the doctors had whisked her away to be saved did he realize that drops of her blood had splattered on his shoes, across the stained leg of his old jeans.

He was still staring at them, his feet swinging in the air as he sat in the hard plastic seat of the hospital waiting area when his dad came to collect him.  His work-worn hands were rough as he tousled Jeff’s hair.  “You were a real hero today, kid.  Proud of you.”

Jeff took a deep breath, the words filling him like a balloon.

Hero. Proud.

He liked the sound of that.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 6\. Hurry (virgil/kayo, hurt!kayo)

“…way….tight…soon…..”

Virgil gritted his teeth, scowling at the blood seeping between his gloved fingers.  He forced himself past every instinct to be gentle and careful, and squeezed harder.  “Say again, Thunderbird Five, you’re breaking up.  John? Come in.”

Above them, the sky crackled and groaned like an omen, and a jab of lightning split the sky.

He’d dragged Kayo to shelter, but even here the rain was slowly turning everything to a mud that covered everyone and everything.  She groaned as Virgil tightened his grip, but despite screwing tighter her eyes didn’t open.

When Kayo stopped making sarcastic comments that soared over most peoples’ heads, then Virgil started worrying.  But when he’d heard her scream with pain, he’d turned back from the path to his Thunderbird and raced up the mud-slick hill side.

Now he wished he’d continued on, got his Thunderbird, come to fetch her from the air.  She’d be safe in Two’s medical bay, and Virgil could get them out from under this storm and on their way to safety.

But he didn’t, and now they were trapped in a nothing shelter, her blood on his hands.  He had to hope that Gordon and Alan got a Bird, any Bird, in the air to come get them before it was too late.  He’d even take Four; hell, with this much rain, Four might almost be in her element.

There was another crackle of static in his ear, and Virgil breathed out and tried to stay calm.  Kayo winced again, her hand coming up to grip his wrist - to push him off or to hold on, he had no idea.  “Guys, if you can hear me…hurry.  Just hurry.”  He looked down at her face, too pale under its coating of mud.  “Please.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 7\. Hollow (scott)

Everyone saw the Thunderbirds flying through the air and thought of them as these solid  _things_ , with mass and weight and perhaps most importantly, presence.

Gordon had, somehow, somewhere, acquired some diecast toys, cheap knockoffs of the real thing, with A, B, C, D, E marked on their side in a ploy to avoid any likeness claims.  The colours were wrong, but somehow these mass-produced trinkets had managed to capture the  _spirit_  of the real thing.

And they were all solid lumps of metal, with mass and weigh and a disproportionate presence where Gordon had lined them up on dad’s desk, like he still expected the old man to come home and crack a smile at the sight.

Scott leans back in dad’s chair, a tumbler of scotch on top of the paperwork and the knockoff of his own bird in his hands.  The nosecone was the right red, but the A stenciled on the side was done in the same garish orange as the model labeled D.  It had a disproportionate heft as it lay in the palm of his hand, a weight he sensed as he gently rolled it in his fingers.

He wished he could feel this solid.  But after years of loss, of the Hood and then the Mechanic, of back to back rescues and the GDF sniffed ever hungry around the edges of their technology, Scott didn’t feel like he much in the way of weight or heft or presence.

He just felt hollowed out and empty.

He drained the scotch one-handed, the other still rolling the little toy.  The garish letter, the sense of a ship seen but not known, suddenly irked him.

The toy arched through the late night air to make a distance splash in the pool.

Scott breathed out, feeling the air rattle between his ribs.  Gordon could puzzle over it in the morning.

Scott turned off the light and went to snatch what sleep he could before emergencies and disasters carved another lump out from under his skin.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 8\. Hoard (Brains)

Hiram K Hackenbacker had been known by many names; refugees learned to shed names like the rich and the safe shed coats.

Names weren’t the only things he’d left behind - he’d left clothes and ideas, notebooks and food, anything that couldn’t be scooped up when the men with guns were at the front door and the back door was only safe for a few seconds longer.

He liked to think he was above material things, that he didn’t emotionally invest in anything that could be taken from him.  But when Jeff Tracy had folded Hiram effortlessly into his schemes for empire, Hiram went from an ascetic existence to one of pure gluttony.

Now, the air warm and quiet on an island that was safe and secure, Hiram twitched in his sleep.  His fist was still curled around his favourite multi-tool, the piles of plans stacked under his cheek.  Around him, carefully arranged in their place, were other tools, machines and cables and half-built prototypes.  In the corner was an unmarked box full of rations, and hidden behind an incongruous hat rack was an escape hatch that led to only Brains knew where.

In the doorway, Scott shook his head as Virgil tried to hide a smile.  “He’s like a dragon on his hoard down here, isn’t he?”

“I thought a hoard was traditionally gold,” Scott replied, voice pitched low so as not to disturb a dragon’s slumber.

“There are things more valuable than gold,” Virgil said in a tone that suggested more than Scott knew he could understand.

They watched in silence as MAX trundled across the workshop floor to drape a blanket lightly over Brains’ shoulders.  Virgil nodded his thanks at the bot and turned off the lights.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 9\. Horde (smol!tracys)

“Did you know,” his mother said, feigning like she was reading off the paper.  “That Genghis Khan had so many children they think that one in every two hundred men today is his descendent.”

Jeff turned back from where the boys were running like a herd of elephant, overexcited and bored after a whole day cooped up inside against the rain. “Why mother,” he deadpanned.  “Is this a comment on my family I see before me?”

“I’m just saying,” she replied, putting down the paper to let Alan crawl into her lap.  He seemed to instinctively know that grandma was the only one that would let him get away with sucking his thumb as he curled up against her.  “Isn’t five enough?”

Jeff tried to find a suitable poker face.  “We keep saying that, but then we go down the cabbage patch and, wouldn’t you know, there’s another one.”  He walked over as his mother laughed to run his hand over his youngest’s head.  “It’s not like we set out for a large family.”

His mother fixed him with a steely glare and an arched eyebrow.  “Darling, you forget that you and Lucy are in the room next to your dad and me.  Or did you forget how thin the walls are in this house?”  She grinned at his blush.  “Unless the cabbage patch is what you kids are calling the beast with two backs…”

“Mother!” Jeff laughed, covering Alan’s ears with his hands.

Ruth continued on, unfazed.  “Then I think we all know where these babies are coming from.  Oh not you darling,” she cooed into Alan’s upturned face, his eyes wide.  “You are a perfect angel from heaven.”

There was another thunderous running of feet and a distant smash.  Jeff sighed.  “You keep the angel.  I’ll go take care of the demon hoard from hell.”

“Go invade the Mongolian steps, that will tire them out,” Ruth called after Jeff.

“Don’t give them ideas” Jeff’s voice echoed down the hall, and got a howl of laughter in return.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 10\. hate (done!john and scott)

John wasn’t given to strong emotion, so when he came striding up from the hangars, still in uniform, Scott tried his best appeasement face.  “John, I….”

The punch caught him off guard and sent him staggering into dad’s desk.  “You left them.”  John’s voice was dripping ice, his skin pale and his eyes burning.  “If you had just  _listened_ , we could have saved them all.”

Scott gritted his teeth, feeling the blossom of pain flowering along his jaw line.  “I was on the ground, I made the call.”

“It was the wrong one.”  John had a way of speaking his mind like it was the writ of god, and suddenly Scott was sick of it.

“Well, we’ll never know. I made the call. I’ll live with the consequences. But don’t you dare come down here to judge me.”  His eyes narrowed as he saw John’s fingers flex and ball into a fist.  “What, you wanna go? You’ve been in zero-g too long, John. It’s scrambled your memory of all the times I’ve  _whooped your ass_.”

John’s entire frame lifted as he breathed in and out.  “You know, you’re right,” he said, the ice suddenly melting to spitting lava.  “I can’t beat sense into you, and I sure as hell can’t talk it into you.  And you know what, Scott? I’m starting to hate you for that.”

Scott’s hackles were up;  a part of him was trying to drag him off the precipice but the rest of him was ready to leap.  “So?”

John was always calm when he had a plan.  “So? I quit. I’ll be off the island in an hour.  Also?”

The second blow caught him just as by surprise as the first, and this time, the desk was the only thing that kept him from hitting the deck.  By the time Scott hauled himself up, John was gone.


End file.
